Washington’s Accounts in the Middle East

Egyptian-U.S. relations have seen unprecedented ups and downs during the last two years. There is no doubt that many hoped that Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest visit would make things return to normal, even though it’s likely that it does not represent a general consensus within the U.S. Congress and administration.

There are still some doubtful voices that are not optimistic about the situation in Egypt, and they do not want to see a new rapprochement between the two countries that does not completely serve American interests. These voices question Egypt’s actual value in the region in light of volatile circumstances that are difficult to control. Conversely, Egypt is also not ready to throw itself anew into America’s embrace without first recalculating and seeing to its own interests. Without a doubt, the policy followed by the Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy — which is an effort to move towards establishing an objective, unbiased and equitable policy towards international powers — shows that Egypt is hoping to establish a more equable and mature policy, not just toward the U.S. but to all powers that concern us and with whom relations are in our economic, political or investment benefit.

However, Kerry’s visit to Cairo has undertones which we must not ignore in our analysis. In short, it appears that the U.S. is re-examining its accounts and looking to safely exit the Middle East and move on to Asia, which was likely from the beginning of Obama’s second term. This new direction is what National Security Adviser Susan Rice has been pushing for, in that she sees rebuilding the U.S. economy as dependent upon the Asian markets and challenging Chinese dominance there, especially in light of the decreased U.S. reliance on Middle East and Gulf oil — even though a shift in the direction of the Asian markets is still impending, if on a smaller level, the U.S. exit from the Middle East is no longer a given. Rather, it appears that its presence has become even more tenacious, in that the current administration is trying to achieve a binary goal: Ending its enmity with Iran and trying to reach an agreement on one hand, and the Palestinian-Israeli agreement on the other. If this administration has the good fortune to make this happen, it would induct Obama into the annals of history.

As for reaching an agreement with Iran — which is to be done via easing economic sanctions in exchange for increased transparency and scaling back on the nuclear program — it would appear that this goal was not absent from U.S. diplomacy when it backed down from striking Syria. This was not just in anticipation of Russia and China’s vetoes in the Security Council; the U.S. was also taking into account Iran’s relations with Syria and the consequences of a strike, which were expected to be even graver than what can be currently seen in Iraq. This, along with the fact that the U.S. may support Shiite supremacy over the Sunni movement in the region, has aroused fear and anger in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations and Israel, which has completely turned the world upside down, with Netanyahu publicly threatening to wage war on Iran should it come down to defending Israel’s national security. The U.S. found an opportunity for their Iranian initiative that it could not let pass by when it met with President Rouhani.

The question that now comes to mind is what exactly brought Kerry to Cairo in the midst of all these developments in the region? Let me be the first to say that my analysis here, however preliminary, is in my view logical and practical. Egypt can act as a safety valve in this crisis amid Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s ire with Obama’s new policy, which represents in its entirety a full departure from the unilateralism of his predecessor. On this unilateralism, the U.S. waged the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, completely ignoring the objections raised by the global community. What is absolutely doubtless is that pacifying the Shiite giant and getting hold of its ambitions is in the better interest of the entire region. As for a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, in spite of the current high level of tension, Egypt’s role as a working party is indispensable to balancing this agreement and to readying the region should the agreement be achieved, in the interest of carrying it out logistically. Egypt should engage citizens to actively participate in restructuring its foreign policy, with the clarification that this is not intended to be favoring one power over another. These types of policies are to be adjourned, and shared interests between these powers are to be predominant. I would add to that, that we do not yet know the extent of the fundamental changes we are seeing, but that it is inevitable the region will be redivided along different lines than the Sykes-Picot Agreements, and it is in the U.S. and Russia’s interests to have a dominant role in that.